I have to add a coda to my last post--this novel has kept me thinking all day long!
The coda is this. The Christian missionaries start saving the twins "thrown away" and attempt to change the culture which they consider essentially barbaric. But the thoughts of Obierika and the utterly magnificent speech of Uchendu demonstrate that the curative seeds were
already there in the thoughts and words of men like these--and probably also in the unspoken thoughts of women. They don't
need the missionaries. Left to itself, the culture would naturally evolve and retain the good that is certainly present.